Mission One
by spookfrost
Summary: Reaching for allies isn't simple.


Shortly after North cuts off Bunny's litany of allegations against Jack Frost with the word "Guardian" ( _"Jack Frost is many things, but he is not a Guardian."_ ), the hologram of said boy shimmers away. The stone on a pedestal spins lazily back into the floor, the panels close, and they're all left staring at the intricate G at their feet. Moonlight bears down on the symbol a few seconds longer, like a promise or an assertion, before that, too, fades. And the Globe Room is that almost homey level of dim again, but like when the Moon first glaringly announced himself and his presence, it is a bit jarring to adjust.

When Bunny blinks, Jack Frost blinks back as a white-lined sketch projected not from the Moon this time but his own seared retinas into the backs of his eyelids. _One hand pocketed, hood shadowing almost all but a smirk._ It's irritating how well the others look to be handling it.

Tooth, cheek tilted into a palm, has been keeping her eyes closed as if to make Jack Frost's afterimage last _longer_. The three minifairies mimic and quietly chitter giddily amongst themselves.

Bunny would guess Sandy, low-lidded and fingers laced over his stomach, has dozed off with his eyes open, if his own didn't catch the spark of profoundness casually twinkling in their depths.

North was stroking his beard at the four triangular-tiled portraits encompassing the circular G-emblazoned panel, and Bunny doesn't know how he missed the intense man leaving their circle eight seconds ago. "I am back!" North booms.

Everyone else jolts alert. Ears, necks, and beaks swivel towards the corner of the Globe Room, a while by one of the tall windows bordering the fireplace, where North thuds a small bulky sack onto the long table. From its lolling cotton mouth spill scrolls and snow globes. A pair of yetis catch a few that were rolling off, and pull out the chairs.

Sandy's already floating over in curiosity.

"Back?" Tooth and Bunny echo.

Bunny adds, mildly baffled, "Just where did you disappear already?"

"Time is never good thing to waste," North declares. "And now we have two urgent missions! One, initiate Spirit of Winter, Jack Frost. Only with him, we achieve _two_ , defeat the revived King of Nightmares- to save the Lights of children around the globe."

Tooth drifts down to a chair at the table.

North cocks his head in a kind of shrug. "Well, knowing how easy first one will go, _one_ is less of a real mission than side mission. Still, never hurts to make pre-preparations."

He upends the sack. North lifts and dusts off a hefty brown book, whose gold corners, garlands, and embossed G glimmer in everyone's eyes with heavier recognition. Preparations are why Bunny was hard-pressed to indulge North's call; Bunny gets the urgency of preparations, and of defeating Pitch Black. But not of _this_.

"P- Ho-" Bunny sputters. "Again, mate, hold on."

"Did I miss something?"

" _Hold_ on."

In half a second, Bunny's bounded to one end of the table. Sandy fans his fingertips over a yawn in the pillow-boosted chair to Bunny's left, and Tooth is hovering (stomach down, ankles crossed up, and elbows resting atop the back of the chair) to Bunny's right; Bunny glances at the two and the litter of _pre-preparations_ between them all before fixing something on the brink of a glare onto North, who raises his brows from the other end of the table.

"We've only been here for, what, ten minutes?"

Really, Bunny was defrosting his toes, Tooth was piping directives, and Sandy was snappily bringing up the inconvenience of this summon with North ( _"-I know. But I obviously wouldn't have called you all here unless it was serious."_ ) not more than five minutes ago.

"So yeah, turned out your big belly wasn't wrong- sadly Pitch is back. And as always, I'm all for stopping that bastard from screwing up the Earth. With simply the three of you." Bunny gestures; then, glancing at a beefy grey yeti on standby and Tooth's razor-winged posse, quickly amends, "Three and sometimes a few thousand, you get what I mean. The point however, being that for _centuries_ we've always won battles alongside people who have the means to fight for what's right. Don't tell me just a few ticks and shiny lines on a rock later, you're all ready to change that?"

North lowers the book and frowns. "You think Man in Moon would choose someone that is weak?"

"Or unrighteous?" Tooth says.

Bunny flails his arms as his pitch rises. "I told you, all Jack Frost cares for is making a mess. And there's more times I've witnessed him scurry off than face anything head-on. At least, you know, _us_ , some may have started as slight messes-" the last Pooka darts his eyes at the retired King of Bandits "-but we'd still been making valuable differences in the universe before being chosen."

"Bunny." Tooth, who has deflated upright and drifted from behind her chair, shakes her head. "Bunny, just because you never saw some things doesn't mean they never happened. Some of us were complete strangers too. At any rate, we shouldn't waste time underestimating anyone in this situation."

Sandy nods. He raises a pointer finger and poofs up a crescent.

"Let alone him indeed," North says. He plunks into the chair beside Sandy. His belly says this won't be fast, and his oldenly established recollections of his high- and mighty-eared comrade say Bunny won't be giving up his grudges even after he loses this debative segment. Casually North scoots closer a scroll and unrolls half on the table. "You should just accept Manny has proven you wrong twice today, Bunny. Quite wrong, as it happens."

"He could've made one mistake," Bunny huffs and crosses his arms. "Or we made a misconception."

Sandy starts shaking his head, then stops, and taps his chin. It's the most credible defense Bunny spouted since Jack Frost became the center of their eyes, and Sandy of all people knows how it is to be misread; he wouldn't wish it on the Man in the Moon. However, the first Guardian said it without uncertainty, _"He's choosing a new Guardian."_. And Sandy, unlike Bunny, had accompanied Tooth and North when they traded for possession of the moon stone at the Lunar Lamadary; decades ago, that was, and Sandy was powerfully asleep by the end of the mission, when apparently MiM spoke to them. Sandy rarely thought about it, until now.

"No. Last we were face to face, sort of, the Man in the Moon said that next time he contacts using that crystal is when we'll need a new Guardian. So the image of Jack couldn't mean anything else," Tooth says to Bunny. "You weren't there."

Sandy laces his hands over his stomach and nods after Tooth.

Bunny looks at everyone else and sputters. "H- bffp- Wh-?" Earlier their truly confounded faces said they hadn't known the _who_ s or _when_ s; but the Man in the Moon never makes empty promises, so unlike Bunny, they had known getting another Guardian wasn't a _maybe_ , but a _when_. "And no one bothered to tell me?!"

"That was a very long time ago. Not important issue right now." North sways a hand and doesn't look at Bunny. Bunny is muttering _Not important my tail_ when North adds, "Anyway, half your personality back then was no better than it is now."

"Oi, and what's that supp- Don't bring those parts up!"

"Why not? Everyone here remembers-"

"North has a point about important issues," Tooth says at a high volume, propping her hands on her hips, "and I don't think they include whether or not Jack could be a Guardian. That matter has clearly been decided already by the Man in the Moon, and, well, even by quick vote…" She glances half inquiringly between the others.

The oldest yet latest official Guardian flashes an open smile and a dreamsand snowflake, G, and up arrow, and a pair of thumbs up as if to ensure the Guardian of Hope feels that bit extra betrayed. But not only is Sandy anxious to move on to addressing the real threats, he does appreciate Jack Frost. Sandy can't say they're friends despite how, probably of everyone here, he's had greater encounters; contrasting ranks and schedules spawned an unhostile but lingering kind of distance. But it can be said that essentially, the Guardian of Dreams and the Spirit of Winter are good acquaintances whose presences offer mutual comfort. How the Queen Mother of Nature, Emily Jane, is a mutual friend of Sandy's and Jack's is another bonus. Jack Frost isn't that bad, and the carefree strength he gives others can be pivotal in a clash against the Embodiment of Fear.

Tooth smiles at Sandy, then looks at North.

"It is obvious, no?" The Guardian of Wonder was less taken aback at how the moonlight took the shape of Jack Frost than how he hadn't speculated it sooner. Granted, North doesn't know him much past the hearsay, but he always got a faint sort of curiosity whenever he spotted the Spirit of Winter; far off parkouring the same roofs North crossed the chimneys of, wavering down the Nice records as time drew out, messing with his comrade now and then, or figuratively nipping at noses, Jack Frost has been pressing at North's peripherals. And Nicholas St. North has known that spindly staff-wielder's potential. Well, however belated his attention, the point is North feels _Guardian_ is a right word for Jack Frost. Not just since the Man in the Moon says so. "Really, by now we should be preparing welcome ceremony!"

"You mean preparing for battle," Bunny says.

"Welcoming Jack Frost is preparing for battle! Is our first mission, which I mentioned just while ago. Or last part of our first mission, first part being why I brought out all these." North swings an arm over the small sackful of scrolls and snow globes littering the table. Their existence had been pretty much forgotten after Bunny laid eyes on the G-embossed book which struck him with the reality of the situation and set off the short latest debate about the next Guardian. "We are not to be losing focus. Accepting our new comrade may be a process, but it is for the sake of vanquishing our old enemy."

Despite how Bunny rolls his eyes, a little to escape North's pointed gaze, he doesn't try dissuading his allies again.

"Right, so by now we should be figuring out Jack's location to let him in on everything." Tooth nods. The minifairies swoop to unroll a couple scrolls, while their queen picks up the closest. It winds up to be a Russian-labeled world map focusing on the Legendary realm, so she can see a mark for her palace in Huangshan, a mark for Bunny's warren under Easter Island, a mark for the Workshop, even a mark for the elusive Island of the Sleepy Sands; Punxsutawney marks the Groundhog's burrows and the Carpathian Mountains marks the Werewolfian Hordes, and so forth. If only they knew Pitch's lair. Or the home of a Legend without believers. "Easier said than done." Tooth pouts a bit.

Sandy has formed a dreamsand magnifying glass. He purses his lips at the scroll beneath it; words swim in the Guardian of Dreams's eyes, but at the top _Blizzard of Easter 1968_ is blocky, big, and bold. Sandy closes the scroll with a wide-eyed glance at Bunny, who luckily has been looking the opposite way at the world map in Tooth's hands. The minifairies, just in case, follow close suit by covering the top of a scroll headlined _Nipper of Noses Freezes Shore_.

"Most Legends have a homebase, even those who tend to travel much," North says, "like elementals. Mother Nature has one, if I recall correctly, Sandy?"

Sandy nods. Then the dreamsand magnifying glass disintegrates and spins above Sandy's head into a chessman-sized Emily Jane, a tree, palace, swirl, wolf, Earth, binoculars, envelope, X, tornado, skull, interrobang, net, and cluster of wilder swirls. As they sizzled up and burst away one after another like blink-speed fireworks, Sandy's expression flickered from affirmative, to cautionary, to mildly frustrated, to solicitous, to plain, to helplessly accepting. Sandy shakes his head and shrugs.

"Ah, I see," North says. He saw the gist. Tooth and Bunny are better at keeping up. North got that Mother Nature still is as guarded as she is tempestuous, and that is enough to extinguish North's ludicrous speck of hope they can spy out the Spirit of Winter by her resources.

"Yeah, she's another one whose address can't be on a map." Tooth swaps the Russian-labeled world map for another, identical save for color-coded highlights representing the densest regions of fame of various Legends. After a frown and a skim, Tooth returns that scroll to the table as well.

"You're looking for a wanderer who's not really celebrated, so of course those shoddy methods aren't gonna work. How about following the biggest trail of bitterness and desolation? You might also find Pitch," Bunny drawls.

Sandy squints at him.

"You know how skilled Pitch is at covering his tracks," North says, "which is why our best first move is seeking out the next Guardian, but even that is not light task if you are not actually helpful."

The Guardian of Memories frowns a bit. "Yes. And though Pitch's scheme is currently unknown, I think it's safe to assume more children could be in danger. Keep that in mind, Bunny, even if you can't set aside your hate for Jack Frost."

Bunny tightens his crossed arms. He doesn't hate the Spirit of Winter, but since the realms whispered of a new wind-riding shepherd of ice and mischief, Bunny couldn't help his wariness which over the centuries evolved into what horticulturists feel seeing a colorful weed. A chatty not-missable-enough weed almost as cavalier as Mother Nature, though at least Emily Jane is too Guardian-resistant to nick the eggs left for human children, or rearrange them, or to dishonor Easter's symbolism by bringing meters of snow- it isn't unwarranted how Bunny _is_ averse to reuniting, but his soul can't deny it is pretty petty in the present. After all, what's a colorful weed to the grim parasite who compromised the universe? As such, Bunny still feels the three Guardians don't have their priorities straight, but more so hasn't he. Not that indignation allows Bunny to speak during the next two minutes.

The others go on hashing out theories based on climate comprehension and pre-slanted hearsay. Facts from pass-bys with their target don't turn out to be useful because they were too swift and scattered to produce a pattern. If Jack Frost has interconnections, they're like the wind.

Bunny becomes a bit unsettled at how, of everyone here, he might've been the closest, despite unwelcomest, to the Spirit of Winter.

Sandy has yawned and smiled at a yeti offering a goblet of water instead of spiked eggnog when the Guardian of Hope becomes twitchy. Bunny speaks up, "Alright, we don't have all day." Everyone else looks at him. "Uh. I hadn't said so because I thought it was obvious, but like, the nippy drongo has an American accent, yeah? I know he's fond of the UK and speaks a few Russian dialects as fluently as he does English, but he falls back on the latter mostly, sounding like he came from the United States."

Tooth stops drumming her chin and snaps her fingers. "Oh, of course! His accent. Not a bad clue, Bunny. How had we not considered it?" The minifairies chitter.

"Truly! Granted, most of us have never really talked to Jack Frost. Not as much or often as Bunny." North turns to Bunny. "I almost thought you could not provide anything but a list of insults."

The Easter Bunny snorts. "Trust me, that list can go longer, but I'd like to chuck the Nightmare King into a never-ending pit before Sunday."

"It's about time," mutters Tooth."Even so, while Bunny's input magnifies the odds of Jack's whereabouts to cold regions of the United States, it's not a small country. And unless somebody knows his schedule, he can still be anywhere in the world!"

Sandy furrows his brows and frowns into a sip of water.

"Should we look for a big ice castle?" Tooth wonders uncertainly. She glances at the minifairies, who shrug and shake their heads. Well, against requests to not dawdle one minute in the field, they always apprised their queen of every glimpse, touch, and partly-coherent chat serendipitously had with the _beautiful smiler_ she couldn't meet, like Toothiana mustn't already bear through her sister Vanish's teasing; a big ice castle wouldn't be omitted.

"I don't think he can control his abilities to that extent," replies Bunny.

"Shoot, what if he _doesn't_ have any sort of base?"

"Sometimes he, like, shouts at the wind to take him home."

"Well, we have to at least narrow it down to a few regions," North says. He chuckles, "Not that _we_ can't handle a quick jog around the planet- likely that must be done anyway, but with Pitch loose, knowing where to concentrate our efforts will be quicker and wiser."

After North's former sentence, the three minifairies perk up. They glance at each other before swooping to unroll one of the scrolls abandoned early on, and chirrup loudly at the text. The Guardians blink and lean over.

Rolling his eyes from the headline, Bunny scoffs, "Of course he'd be responsible for that."

"Usually it's Mother Nature freezing the ocean," Tooth comments. The minifairies chitter and Tooth peers steadier at the text. "Oh! This report's just ten weeks old, and says Jack was in Massachusetts. Wasn't there a short snowstorm in Maryland last week?"

"Even though in that hemisphere should be spring? Yes," Bunny says.

North unrolls the scroll Sandy pushed out of the way early on and mumbles in deliberation, "Indeed, his most famous snowstorm was over southeast Canada." He unrolls the world map marking Legends' homebases and runs his finger across the paper. "But even before '68, a number of Legends, mostly warmth-craving ones, have been emmigrating from that broad area… mainly northeast USA!"

Sandy perks up.

"That's where the Groundhog still lives," mutters Bunny as a theory shivers up his spine, "in Pennsylvania." One side of Bunny's nose twitches and he clenches a fist, before shaking his head. He envisions the King of Nightmares, and shoving a toxic neon grenade down his unstylish robes, before Sunday.

"So we know where to focus?" After North stands and tosses her a snow globe, Tooth does a whirl. "Great, everyone! We're going to pick up our new friend!"

"Ally," Bunny corrects, then is glad North has been too swift calling directives to a pair of yetis to catch what Bunny's self must correct more loudly into, "Contingent pawn."

Sandy caught both. He slides Bunny a sardonically raised brow and amused grin.

"Oh, but I won't need this." Tooth hands back the snow globe as North reloads the rest spilt on the table into their small sack. The three minifairies phased out of a window a second ago to brief the Palace on the state of affairs; ampler troops should touch base at the Globe Room in less than a minute so their queen can advise where to keep an eye out for the next Guardian, using their telepathic link much like how a human security guard may use closed-circuit television to catch a culprit. Although the minifairies can't pause their customary assignments for long and their target is, as Bunny said, a wanderer, he'll be far less straining to get since they discovered his favorite regions to go. Tooth tells North as such, and North nods.

"Of course! Your army is more than immense. Meanwhile, I suppose Bunny shall cover the ground." North throws the snow globe over his shoulder.

It is a centimeter before clipping Bunny's nose before he ducks. A brownish yeti the Pooka somehow didn't hear station hisself behind him fretlessly grabs the snow globe before it can hit the wall. A greyer yeti to his left yarbles at Bunny to not get sidetracked. Once Bunny straightens, North's small sack of snow globes knocks him in the chest. "Oi! And why me?"

"You know Jack, have biggest ears, and are better on foot," reasons North.

True. "Ta, mate, but both of our wish lists included never to see each other again." Sort of a lie. The Spirit of Winter hasn't stormed on Easter in forty decades, but Bunny has been mindful of pettier stabs at breaking his own resolve to stop feeding that attention-starved spectral urchin attention. As the shenanigans became lazier each year, Bunny's plan might've worked, until today. Bunny's teeth grit at the wide-eyed smiley mask he is no doubt to be greeted with.

"Is that so?" Father Christmas replies. "I am sorry, then, because chicken heart is out of stock." North double-pats Bunny's cheek.

Bunny blinks while his nose twitches. He grumbles. After handing the small sack of snow globes to the greyish yeti, he tells North, "You're ever a cheeky galah, but fine. Since Tooth is scouting Jack from the skies, someone has to confront him if he's more earthbound." The Pooka scratches the fluff of his chest as he accepts he is the most fit, despite least enthusiastic, Guardian to take that role. "Then what are you gonna be doing?"

North glances at that G-embossed book on the table. "Preparing welcome ceremony!"

"Seriously? Bludger!"

The bludger frowns as Bunny stabs a forefinger into his belly. "Is not a piece of pie! You have any idea how long it takes to teach elves proper use of brass instruments? Granted, my top class should be ready for spotlight by now, but show requires lot of coordination. And fire. And presents! Sandy, could you know what Jack wish for?"

Bunny can't muster the care to say _not fire_.

The Guardian of Dreams, who has been floating towards Tooth to check on, halts as North repeats his name. A question mark shimmers.

Bunny cuts off North. "Jack won't even want to accept Guardianship." Hope blooms like realization as he says it. The Spirit of Winter, though a starstruck chaser of the Guardians when Bunny met him, has grown quite jaded. Like Mother Nature (the mutually estranged daughter of Pitch Black) Jack may not be evil but he's as fond of the Guardians as Bunny is as fond of winter; deep down he may appreciate the essentiality, but he's more comfortable at a distance. Bunny laughs a bit as he says, "No matter how you blare your trumpets, North, there is no way you're winning that drongo over to the side of responsibility." Maybe three centuries ago.

North raises a brow at Bunny. "Bunny, I thought you decided to put rain check on helpless insults. Now you are trying to tell jokes, to boot!" North guffaws.

"It was an honest rational inference. Also a warning, if you will." Bunny crosses his arms but isn't too vexed when North smiles and nods condescendingly. For Bunny, North's disillusionment when Jack refuses everything and quits out the open roof window will be a little reward, even though Pitch Black must be soon after taken care of.

Sandy is blinking droopily when Tooth whirs beside them again. The minute North turned to Bunny and the minifairies turned up, she hasn't wasted a breath in tracking down the next Guardian, simultaneous to a lot of molars, canines, and incisors her troops could've missed. A couple minifairies came upon Jack after half a minute. "He was hanging around the small city of Burgess, Pennsylvania," Tooth proclaims.

North grins up at Tooth. He is not too surprised, but commending as he says, "That was fast!"

"Great work, Tooth." Bunny nods at her after uncrossing his arms. "I was just gonna set out, but I reckon your fairies are already bringing him here, too?"

"Jack and my fairies usually get along fine when paths happen to cross, so yeah, I was going to let the ones closest lead the way. But it looks like, I don't know," Tooth trails off and bites her lip. Through one of the minifairies facing him, Tooth saw Jack; his hood was up, like the hologram him, but unlike it, his grin was pinched as he kindly yet tersely waved the minifairies off. "He said he shouldn't disturb their errands, and disappeared."

Bunny sputters a laugh, incredulously. "If their current errand isn't him, disappearing is quite right! But hardly just happens. You sure you got Jack Frost?"

"Memory hasn't dulled," the Guardian of Memories retorts. She telepathically checks on the minifairies in Burgess, before clarifying, "Well, Jack might not have disappeared from _Burgess_. My fairies there are still keeping sharp, and haven't detected any strong shift in wind. Now to think about it, can he even fly all this way? I just assumed so."

Bunny hums tunelessly and says, "Maybe he's tired. We ought to be ashamed, probably disturbing him."

Centuries haven't really lessened the bizarrity in recalling Bunny used to be flummoxed at the essence of sarcasm.

Sandy shrugs, hardly present since a bit ago. It is thanks to how these past ten minutes consisted of _much talk, meager doing_ and thanks to those six goblets of spiked eggnog (rapidly downed because MiM hadn't yet confirmed Pitch Black's resurgence to be real business, and because the yammering Guardians weren't going to ease that yeti of the full tray) that Sandy has slipped to dreamland. He didn't wholly wish to now, but gives in, trusting his friends can bring Jack Frost to the Workshop safely before he wakes.

"Whatever might be the case-" North looks solemn- "it is clear that Bunny and yetis must now go and grab Jack Frost. Surprise him so fast, he cannot do a thing, before he is thrown through portal!"

The yetis holding the snow globes do not blink. After two seconds, the browner yeti yarbles cursorily and throws down his snow globe, which fluidly bursts into an opalescent vortex waiting in the air beside Bunny. Bunny blinks and remarks, "Pragmatic. To Burgess it is, then. Can't wait any longer to get this over with." His foot drums, and a tunnel unfurls into the rug, to North's dismay.

Before Bunny can dive in, Tooth exclaims, "Wait. Surely you don't mean to literally manhandle Jack? Guys?" Feathers flare.

"No worries, I won't even touch him," Bunny promises. The two yetis don't answer.

"And to lessen nausea inexperienced users get teleporting without a vessel," North says, "we are going to need bigger sack."

* * *

 **[minor references to GoC universe (books & William Joyce's instagram drawings) even though William Joyce already confirmed that the movie's like an AU of the books, bc I like to connect them anyway. the Lunar Lamadary and Tooth's sister Vanish exist in GoC canon, but their very brief contexts here were just other headcanons. cross-posted on ao3]**


End file.
